"The Dummy" is the 33rd episode of the third season of The Twilight Zone, and was first broadcast in May of 1962. It stars Cliff Robertson (last seen in 100 Yards Over The Rim) as ventriloquist Jerry Etherson.
In my review of "The Trade-Ins" I note that it is one of the Twilight Zone episodes that starts out with a challenging concept but turned into a simpler, sentimental story. This episode is the opposite: the viewer can probably immediately guess where an episode about a ventriloquist and his dummy is going, but the episode manages to draw more suspense from a story about a ventriloquist than it probably should. What could have been a supernatural story about a haunted ventriloquist's dummy (you did guess that part, right?) is instead turned into a psychological story, where the boundary between Jerry's thoughts and realities is never quite made clear to him, or the viewer. The cinematography also emphasizes the uncertain nature, as the camera uses a series of Dutch Angles to portray Jerry's disorientation. Although this episode seemingly deals with a silly subject, it deals with it in a serious way. This episode also is one of The Twilight Zone's first forays into horror after a string of episodes dealing with lighter topics.